


Let's Hurt Tonight

by katnissdoesnotfollowback (lost_on_cloud_9)



Series: Oneshot Collection [16]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 22:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_on_cloud_9/pseuds/katnissdoesnotfollowback
Summary: Time, Death, Love. We wish for more time. We fear death. We long for love.Inspired by (not based on) the film Collateral Beauty and the associated song, "Let’s Hurt Tonight" by OneRepublic, a short peek into the lives of the Everdeen women. Canon compliant. Written for the 2017 Candle for the Caribbean Charity Anthology.





	Let's Hurt Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to titaniasfics/titania522 for pre-reading, and to the amazing ladies of Love in Panem for answering the needs of others.

**_Time…We wish for more time._ **

The textbooks weigh down her bag until her shoulders ache, and yet she pushes through the hallways towards the classroom, her footsteps a steady cadence on the pristine tile floors. As she rounds the last corner, she checks her schedule again to verify the room number. The bright purple ink is sometimes difficult to read against her pale skin, especially under the harsh fluorescent lights of Thirteen. She misses the sunshine.

“Hey, Prim!” She pauses at the shout and turns to face the speaker as he hurries up to her, his hands filled with textbooks, papers shoved between the pages in a jumbled mess. A twinge of annoyance hits her. She’ll be late again if he’s feeling chatty.

“Rory, I’ve got class,” she reminds him, holding up her wrist to flash her schedule at him.

“I know, me too. I just wanted to know what you’re doing for Reflection tonight,” he pants out and shoves his glasses up his nose. They’re a new addition and something she’s had to get used to seeing on him. She misses seeing his eyes unfiltered by the glare of artificial lights off the thick lenses, but reminds herself that at least now, he can see the world around him clearly. His family would’ve never been able to afford the corrective lenses back in Twelve, but here in Thirteen, this is the sort of thing they just take care of for you as a member of their community.

“Reflecting. Studying, that sort of thing,” she says.

“You wanna study together?” he asks shyly. 

She hates to refuse him, but there’s so much to learn. Ever since her sister left to go to the Capitol, she’s been cramming as much knowledge into her skull as she could fit, making use of every last second of her carefully rationed time, planned to the minute on her wrist. Thirteen is training her to be a field medic in preparation for her training as a doctor. She refuses to let them down. Refuses to let her sister down. The pride glowing in Katniss’ eyes when Prim told her about the training still warms her every time she doubts herself.

“Maybe,” she tells him anyways, and he smiles, a new kind of warmth filling her at the expression on his face. He smiles more often now. She supposes relative safety, a full belly, and the ability to discern his daily surroundings have done that.

“I’ll see you later, then,” he tells her. They both turn and hurry towards their respective classrooms. She looks over her shoulder once and pushes down the disappointment when she sees that he’s focused elsewhere. Then he’s turned the corner.

It’s comforting, studying with Rory, and quickly becomes a habit after that first night. She enjoys it, and even though she worries about her sister, the quiet time spent poring over her medical books with him perched nearby, engrossed with his engineering books, soothes her fears a little. She wishes she could spend more time like this.

When they approach her to pack her bags, with orders to the front, she’s confused at first. She double checks the writing on her wrist, but she can’t find anyone to tell her if they can do this. She’s not even fourteen yet. No one calls her Soldier or even Medic Everdeen because she hasn’t achieved that rank. Supposing that she must go, she searches for her mother. Eventually, she finds her mother’s name on the hospital schedules, assisting a surgery, but before she can head to the room to wait, news flashes bright and terrible across the screens placed strategically throughout Thirteen.

She watches as bullets fly and lives end, each death a tick mark in the column of those whose time has run out. She wonders if she could’ve prevented any of them from running out of time. Then her sister’s face, serious and determined as she looses an arrow while flames erupt behind her. She barely flinches anymore, at least not with a camera lens trained on her. Being in danger and facing death while pretending it has no effect on her is now second nature to the older Everdeen girl. A courage forged in the fires of the Games...Games that she volunteered to enter to save her baby sister from death. The words the news anchor speaks vanish in the cold, carefully filtered air of Thirteen. Meaningless as the Games themselves. 

Turning on her heel, she marches to her room and packs her bag, dresses in the issued uniform of a field medic, and leaves a note for her mother, scrawled across a page torn from one of her medical textbooks.

“Prim! Wait up, Prim!” She turns and faces his shattered eyes as he takes in what she’s wearing. Where she’s headed. “They can’t…”

“They did,” she shrugs and shows him her orders in ugly purple ink on her wrist. “I want to go, Rory. I’ll be okay.”

Slowly, he nods and then pulls her into his arms. For a second, she’s not sure what to do. Then she relaxes into the embrace and rubs her cheek against the coarse gray fabric of his uniform. “You’re smart, fast, and a medic. I don’t think they’ll want to shoot someone who can save their life.”

“It’ll be a different world when I see you again,” she murmurs, repeating the words she used to send off her sister.

“Stay safe, okay?” She nods and steps back, pausing for a second and wondering if he’d want to kiss her before she goes. She’s never been kissed before and it seems like the right thing to do at a time like this. But he makes no move, so she waves shyly as she walks away and boards the hovercraft.

Fear follows her at every turn, and yet she knows that this is what she was trained to do. Duck and run, ignore the screams. Bandage this wound. Remove that bullet. Soothe this pain. Erase that hurt. Tie off the stitches. Spread a medicine. Wipe away the sweat and tears. If she wants a new world, this is what she must do.

She basks in the sunshine during the days it peeks from behind the clouds, welcoming its blinding brightness after the stifling air of Thirteen, turning her face towards the sky with a smile at every opportunity. Time here is more like at home. Not carefully divided for maximum efficiency but flowing and braking, shifting and difficult to know. Several of the soldiers and other medics don’t quite know what to make of her as she savors each second of the warmth and light while they shrug, indifferent to its effect. 

Some nights she thinks of the boy she left behind without a kiss. Wonders if he’ll be waiting when she gets back. Others, she worries about her mother who she hopes is holding up okay with two absent daughters, and she worries especially about her sister. Each patient makes her think,  _ This could’ve been Katniss. This could’ve been Peeta. This could’ve been Gale. One day, this could be Rory. _

She cries when the news reaches her that Katniss’ squad was hit, all believed to be dead. She rejoices when corrections announcing their survival surface, although much quieter than her comrades, who marvel at the Mockingjay’s ability to escape death time and time again, to lengthen her life and so their chances against impossible odds. 

Closer and closer they move towards the city center, and with each block they advance, her hopes soar. It will end soon. Soon it will be over and she can go home to her mother and her sister and live with them in a shiny new world. She collects the minutes until that freedom like tiny, precious pearls and polishes them to a luminescence that sustains her through the bloody, sweat and scream-filled nights. She begins to understand her sister’s nightmares. 

When the parachutes drop, and small hands reach for them, she’s busy binding a leg wound, the soldier deliriously mumbling about gifts. The screams that fill her ears sound like the ones her mother used to stifle as they watched helpless from a television as someone they love dodged fire, spears, arrows, knives, mutts, poison. The blood curdling cries of mothers and fathers watching their world end.

She glances up and watches the carnage, frozen in horror until the soldier she was helping yells at her.

“Go help them! I’ll be fine!”

She doesn’t need to be told twice and sprints, dodging people in shock. Capitolites, Peacekeepers, soldiers from Thirteen. Time slows as she falls to her knees next to the nearest child still moving. She springs into action as she watches the clock on the little girl's life slowly unwind. Other medics from Thirteen and Peacekeepers arrive on her heels to help.

“What can I do?” one of them asks and she glances up at the terrified face in a bloodstained white uniform. He has grey eyes. Like Katniss. Like her father’s.

“Peel away the cloth here. Carefully.”

“Prim! _ PRIM! _ ” 

The scream is worse because she’s heard it before. At a Reaping. From an Arena, broadcast across airwaves and miles. Her head jerks up and her eyes search until she finds her sister in the crowd, climbing up over the barricade. In her last second, she calls out for the sister who gave up everything to give her more time.

Then her clock stops.

* * *

**_Death…We fear death._ **

Another life fades and blinks out, carried away in the shadowy arms of Death. She is no stranger to Death. Her entire existence is a constant battle between it and its counterpart. It comes with the territory of being a healer. Save the ones you can, let go the ones you cannot. Easier said than accomplished.

When she was younger and had time for fanciful thoughts, she used to think of Life and Death as existing between the light and shadows of a room, waiting to see which would grant its gifts to each patient as she worked. The more skilled she became, the more Life would bend towards generosity. But Death would always wait in the shadows to make its claim. Inevitable.

She couldn’t save them all. She still can’t.

Eventually, as a healer must, she learned that Death was an impartial and fickle Gamemaker. Decisions on who lives and who dies when Death comes for them follow no rules or formula. The knowledge does little to prevent the grief. It never does.

Her world becomes a battlefield as she moves on from the bed filled now with only a lifeless body. Next patient then. She couldn’t save her husband. She couldn’t save her youngest daughter. There’s only one life left that matters now. She fears Death will come for her last living love. Will steal into the night and snatch the breath from her chest.

So she visits as often as possible. Does whatever she can to assist the doctors and nurses. Quick moments stolen between patients and work, work, work, work, work. A healer’s work is never done, but for her daughter...for Katniss, she can spare a few minutes.

Those minutes kill her. The burns that mark her oldest daughter a constant reminder of the ones they lost. Husband, father, hunter, lover. Daughter, sister, healer, giver. 

A shadow herself, she feels she has become Death. Longs for it to take her into its embrace most mornings. She’s been here before and knows the consequences, the slogging climb out of the abyss and the shattered trust scattered across the battlefield she’ll find at the hillcrest. No. She won’t do that again. Katniss is all she has left. She owes it to her daughter to remind Death and Grief...not today. Not yet. She takes the medicines that keep her going. Keep her from succumbing again and murdering whatever trust and love remains between them.

Grief still buries her beneath its tremendous weight. To keep slogging forward up that hill, she buries herself in her work instead. Death hovers in the corners of her life and mind but never comes for her. She plods onwards. Next patient.

Each life faces Death in their own way. This one smiles in peace. That one screams in horror and begs for more time. Coin falls in silent shock. Snow laughs as he dies. And she screams, thrashing in the arms of a Soldier from Thirteen as she tries to reach her daughter before Death takes Katniss with a single, swift bullet.

“Katniss! Let me go!” She screeches and kicks, refusing to let them murder her daughter after everything Katniss has given to them. Someone stabs a needle into her arm and she falls limp, still sobbing. “Katniss, my baby.”

It’s the most life she’s felt in months, struggling to reach her daughter in the City Circle, but when she wakes to a world that’s imprisoned her daughter and put her on trial for assassination, she returns to her work to keep from punching someone or setting herself on fire on the Tribute Training Center steps in protest.

“Ms. Everdeen, you’ll want to watch this,” a Soldier informs her one afternoon in late winter as she peels off her latex gloves. She pauses in front of the television and squints at the bright clarity, so different from the screens they were required to watch in Twelve. The picture here so crisp that it hurts the eyes. She’s still not used to it.

“Very good then. Henceforth, the Mockingjay shall be sentenced to exile until further notice. A sentence to be carried out immediately...in District Twelve.” The person on the screen nods in satisfaction and slams a small wooden hammer on the oak desk behind which she sits. “Court is adjourned.”

Death and memory mock her. She should be stronger, able to face that place with her daughter, but of the two of them, Katniss is more likely to be able to withstand the memories. She hurries from the hospital, tears streaming from her eyes and cursing Life, who is the taker this time. She pens the letter and seals it with a kiss and her tears, finds Haymitch and hands it over with barely a word.

“Where will you go?” he asks, his voice rough but his eyes soft.

“I don’t know yet,” she whispers. “Somewhere Death doesn’t lurk in every corner.”

He licks his lips and looks around them at the bustle of the hospital. It’s one of the few places she feels strong, when she’s fighting back Disease and Death with both hands and all her heart. Haymitch nods and pockets the letter for Katniss.

“I’ll give it to her.”

“Thank you, Haymitch,” she mutters and turns to get back to work.

“You know…” he says and as she faces him, he runs a hand over his rough stubble. “They’re building a hospital in District Four. Gonna need staff and people to train healers and doctors and all that. Annie’s headed back there in a few days. Says she wants to have her and Finnick’s baby there. Bet she could use a level-headed and experienced midwife.”

Life calls to her and she nods, giving no definite answer to the drunk in front of her, but she sighs in relief when she steps from the hovercraft a few days later and breaths in the salt-heavy air. She links arms with Annie and reminds Death...not today.

Annie’s baby arrives in the middle of the afternoon, when they have to throw open all of the windows for relief from the heat of summer. Sunshine fills the house and leaves no room for shadows. She cuddles the freshly washed and weighed newborn for a second before laying him tenderly in his mother’s arms. There’s no room for Death here. Not today.

Relief and joy paint Annie’s features with exhausted light as she kisses her son and bathes his cheeks in her tears. Death already took so much from this family.

She leaves mother and child alone to bond, washing her hands and standing on the porch to listen to the steady roll of the waves. The clock of nature pushing ever forward and back. Looking up at the sky, she sheds a handful of tears for the ones Death took from her. Husband and Daughter. 

There are still days when waking brings no relief and sleep is the torment of memories gone sour. She is careful to take her medicines, to spend at least an hour a week with a therapist at the hospital, and above all, to find the pockets of Life in the shadows laid by Death. But she continues on. Next patient.

The thoughts make the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands itch and so she races back inside and dials the number she now has memorized, to the massive house in Twelve where her daughter still lives. She does not fear her own Death. She never really has. She fears what Death can still take from her.

* * *

**_Love…We long for love._ **

Bits of parchment litter the parlor. Carefully, she sorts through them, dividing them into stacks. Her hand shakes as she realizes how many people came to her aid, and how precious the help is. Worn photographs which might be the only mementos of grieving parents and siblings. Tokens of love yet another one of the victims of a war torn country. She sets one on the table and runs her hands lovingly over the familiar face to flatten the picture. It’s badly damaged, but she intends to send it back once they’re done.

“Should we...there’s so many,” Peeta breathes the words more than speaks them. “Maybe we should just pick one and start.”

He’s getting overwhelmed, and in a way, so is she. He’s right, so many lost to death, their time cut too short. She glances up at him, his eyes darting between two pictures. The tormented look in his gaze telling her that he remembers enough about the faces in front of him to cause him distress. They’re still rebuilding his memory. They may never stop. And although they’ve grown so much in the past few months, and Dr Aurelius helped him to start, there are still things she can't bring herself to speak of with him.

“No,” she says softly and slides her photograph across the table to him. He sets down Clove and Jackson to stare at the face she’s presented to him. “We should start with Rue.”

Peeta nods, slowly at first, but then faster as he grabs his sketchbook from beside him. “Yes. Perfect.”

She smiles and tugs her own blank parchment in front of her. They talk quietly as he draws and she writes, her chest thrumming with co-mingled joy and pain. Rue in the trees, on her toes perched for flight, protecting and nursing Katniss while she was under the influence of tracker jackers, her many siblings she cared for, the innocent friendship she offered to Katniss in a place where friendships were doomed.

By the time they’re both happy with the page, the sun is near to setting and they both flex their hands to work out the aches. Peeta smiles as he admires their work. 

“It’s so...full,” Katniss says as she scans over the words crammed together in her most careful writing, hugging Peeta’s pictures which fill the corners. One of Rue in life, and one in death. 

“That’s good,” Peeta insists.

“She was only twelve.”

“That doesn’t mean she had a small effect on those she left behind to love her memory.”

Tears sting her eyes and she swipes at them. He coos soft words to her and without thinking, she climbs into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck, hides her face and sobs onto his shoulder. For a second, he hesitates, but then his arms embrace her, hands stroking over her hair as he murmurs to her and they rock, rock, rock. Soothing a nightmare like it’s a skinned knee that will eventually heal.

Next is Prim. She has to take a deep breath before she starts and it takes them a week just to finish the one page because they have to stop so often to talk or to cry.

The days pass slowly. At first, it feels a slight to their memory to live life as though there was no war, but in the evenings, they sit in the parlor and record the devastation in a growing folio of human life and love.

They add family. Two fathers on opposite pages, facing one another in death in a way they never would have done in life. The baker and the coal miner. One with quiet words and the gift of art, the other with boisterous laughter and the gift of song. They have no picture of Peeta’s father so Katniss insists he draw them both. Both of them cry as they seal the pages and add them to the book. Before the tears can clear, she grabs his hand and pulls him out the door to play in the rain. The fresh summer shower washes clean the wounds that may never fully heal, but they join hands and run, splashing through puddles until their laughter draws out neighbors to do the same.

She travels deeper into the woods and brings back sustenance to pair with the breads he bakes. They plant a garden and grow their own vegetables and fruits. She’s plucking tomatoes from the vine while he picks peaches from a tree, carefully placing them in the basket on the ground so the delicate fruit doesn’t bruise. When he stands upright and uses the hem of his shirt to wipe sweat and dirt from his face, a trembling passes through her. She’s grateful for the phone ringing inside, distracting her from the thoughts crashing through her body.

The sound of her mother’s voice surprises her, but then they’re crying together, something they always seem to do during their far-between phone calls, only this time...the tears are those of joy and love and  _ Life _ . She eagerly awaits the mail and the picture her mother plans to send for nearly three weeks after that phone call. The trains aren’t always reliable just yet.

So many friends in these pages, she thinks fondly as she flips between Madge and one of Peeta’s friends from town. Running a palm over Finnick’s face, despair threatens to sink her below the depths. It’s only when Peeta’s hand covers hers that she realizes she’s frozen in place.

“Here,” he murmurs and she moves her hand so he can place the picture of Finnick’s son on the already crammed full page. He shifts it to another spot when it covers some of the words in his first choice. But the second choice is just as bad. Katniss snorts and then they’re both laughing.

“Let’s just make a new page,” Katniss suggests when they manage to stop. “We’ll put him right behind Finnick.”

It becomes a pattern. More infant faces join the pages of the book, a story of living life. Growing again in the face of devastation. They're not the only ones searching for ways to make life good again. 

When she returns from the woods one day in late summer, Katniss pauses beside the meadow. She hasn’t set foot on it since the end, but her boot sinks into soft earth as she carefully treads towards the green shoots that caught her eye. She kneels beside them and reaches out to touch them, but too afraid of killing the new life, she yanks her hand back and instead, waters the meadow with her tears.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs to the graveyard and returns to her home.

That night, they throw open the windows and the pages flutter in the breeze. Haymitch squints at the page they’ve been working on and nods before handing it to Peeta.

“It’s good,” he says and stands, slamming the door on his way out. They listen to his heavy steps cross the porch and then crunch on the gravel walkway that leads to his house.

“Do you think…?” she asks tearfully, but Peeta shakes his head.

“No. He needs this as much as we did. We just have to be there for him.”

“Like we did for each other,” she whispers and Peeta nods. “We’ll protect each other.”

“That’s what we do. We’re a family,” Peeta affirms.

Only he doesn’t feel much like family when she’s sleeping in his arms with his hot breath tickling her and cooling the sweat on the back of her neck. In the morning, they’re stuck together with the heat and laugh as they finally manage to work themselves free.

She’s not laughing in the shower when she washes herself and the soap on her hands stimulates her breasts, making her moan in a way she hadn’t thought herself capable of anymore, if she ever did.

Time in District Twelve runs in bursts then drags it’s feet, as though it’s a child and doesn’t want to quit playing just yet. She feels the same way as she climbs apple trees to reach the fruits and passes them down to Peeta. He talks about all the pies and tarts he can make for the upcoming Harvest Festival. His words buzz in her ear, her eyes distracted by a droplet of sweat carving its way beneath the collar of his shirt. And while she thinks she understands the words, he laughs when she must answer incorrectly. Her cheeks flush and she stomps away, but he grabs her hand, brushing hair from her face and insisting that he didn’t mean anything by teasing her. She just didn’t seem to really be paying attention. His smile brings out lines in the corners of his eyes and she can’t stop staring. Worry replaces laughter in his eyes and he presses the back of his hand to her forehead.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just a little overheated,” she insists and rushes into the house before he can suggest it or try to take care of her.

He stops sharing her bed with her, as though he senses that he is the source of her troubles. He doesn’t even touch her for weeks. Not until the night of the harvest festival when he stands along the side of the dancing and watches the couples twirling and smiling at one another. She wonders how so much love can survive something so awful. How can it breathe in oppression? How can it survive total destruction? How can it be born and grow after all of that?

Her body sways as Peeta nudges his shoulder into hers and she understands exactly how it does all of that in the moment she turns her face to look up at his uncertain one.

“The last time I danced like this was at Finnick and Annie’s wedding.”

“Who’d you dance with?” he asks softly.

“Prim,” she whispers and he looks at the ground for a moment.

“Katniss,” he says but can’t seem to go on and she realizes in that instant that the last time  _ he _ danced like this was probably the night they got engaged in a mad attempt to quell a rebellion they had no chance of ever containing.

“Dance with me, Peeta,” she blurts out and his head snaps back up to look at her. She repeats it in a whisper. “Dance with me. For them.”

He nods and holds out his hand. It trembles slightly as she places her palm in his, but as his fingers close around hers, he spins her in a quick, confident swirl. She laughs as he pulls her into his arms and they join the mass of dancers. 

She wonders if it’s her imagination or if the others in the square give them a wide berth. They seem to almost slow their own dancing to watch. Her spine prickles with the familiar feeling of being the center of their attention. The one they watch and gawk at and follow into the flames. Only this time, the weight of the symbol rests lightly on her shoulders. Perhaps because the boy spinning her until she’s breathless and dizzy shares the weight with her. And didn’t he always? Only love and rebirth are so much lighter than hatred and destruction. Her laughter spins about the square just as fast as they do, and when the dance ends, she tumbles on top of his lap at a picnic table set up along the side.

They watch for a few rounds while they catch their breath and when the song shifts to a slower one, Peeta lifts her from his lap.

“I’ll go get us something to drink,” he offers, but she shakes her head and takes his hand in hers again.

“Dance with me,” she repeats.

“For them? Live our lives well to make their sacrifice mean something?” he asks, using the words they’ve repeated almost daily as an affirmation, but she shakes her head this time.

“For us.”

He blinks for a moment but then sweeps her into the dance. She rests her head on his shoulder and lets him lead her blindly around the floor while she hums at first and eventually sings the words to the song, unnoticing the looks they receive. Quick glances and knowing smiles before they look away and allow the star crossed lovers their own moments together.

When the music ends, she lifts her head enough to kiss his jaw, in the same spot where Haymitch once punched him. Peeta freezes as her lips linger and when she pulls back to look in his eyes, she already knows.

It still takes them a few more months of healing and growing, learning to live without the threat of the Games hanging over their head, and to bleed their grief and their happy memories onto parchment in ink and paint.

They play silly games for laughter and serious ones for the memories and to deal with the bad days. They take care of one another when a fever hits or the love of one's lost becomes too much to bear alone. 

Winter tests everything they’ve built. They spend the cold nights in pleasant pursuits until the answers can’t wait any longer. He demands nothing from her that she can’t give until that night when he can no longer wait, and he begs her for a kind of healing she had hoped to avoid. But she accepts that  _ he  _ needs this, as much as it may hurt her to do it. 

“Katniss, I need to know. Please. Tell me all the things that you couldn’t before. No matter how much you think it’s going to hurt me.”

She talks until her voice goes hoarse and Peeta’s long since buried his hands in his hair, yanking on the curls periodically, the pain keeping him grounded as she dredges up old memories and tries to make sense of things she never understood. In the end, all she can tell him is that whatever they once were, they were always affected...tainted...by the Games.

He leaves with murmured words about needing more time, the door slamming between them and making her race to the study where she digs out a box covered in dust. 

“Where is it, where is it?” she cries as she yanks out the burned remnants of the black outfit and searches the pockets. She finds it and clings to it, suddenly lost in the depths of Thirteen. As she rubs the pearl over her lips, she cries out in pain and crumples onto the floor to sob uncontrollably. She’s like that only for minutes before his steps thud down the hall and she closes her eyes to wait for her death.

Instead, he picks her up and carries her to her room. His tears splash onto her face and she drops the pearl somewhere to hold onto his hair and bring his lips to hers. They fall onto the bed as she tries to make up for every fake kiss and every hurt they unintentionally inflicted on one another and replace them with this feeling deep inside her that grows and pulses with every breath she takes, as inseparable from her body as her heart.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left,” he chants over and over between kisses awash with their tears.

“It doesn’t matter,” she tells him. “What matters is now.”

So they make the most out of now and live each day to honor the ones gone and to nurture the love growing between them. He worries that the foundation is shaky until she reminds him that they were willing to die to keep the other alive. There’s no weakness in that.

It’s a slow and painstaking process, much like rebuilding his memories was, but as winter melts into spring and the world reawakens around them, fresh and struggling but with hope budding around every corner, she begins to believe again in the power of rebirth.

And she begins to long. To long for something she'd once been certain had been stolen through torture and lies. Deceit mixed artfully with truth until reality became unknowable. She once thought love was easy as breathing. Her parents made it seem so. Until Death took one half and left the other wasted. Then she thought Love was pain. In some ways, it still is. She hurts when she thinks of Prim and her father and all of the other faces lovingly painted into their book. She hurts when she thinks of Peeta's fingers around her throat and the fury that once lived in his eyes.

Real Love is only pain when it's been lost. But it's also joy and laughter. Comfort and calm.

When he kisses her one spring night and the longing spreads to her toes and fingertips and she follows it through breathless touches and whispered affirmations to the end, she knows that “Real” is really just the start. Years upon years of days and nights, growing and reseeding together until there's one more longing they choose to answer together.

While they watch their children play in the meadow, she thinks that longing isn't such a bad thing after all. Because we don't just long to receive love. What would be the point in that? We long to give it too.


End file.
